Title

Author

Project Director

Gailey, Elizabeth

Department Examiner

McCluskey, Michael

Department

Dept. of Communication

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

The most recent presidential election saw a great divide in Americans' political ideologies (Enli 2017) as well as an increase in social media use in relation to obtaining political news (Gottfried and Shearer 2016). Social media is a growing platform to obtain political news, and this study found that 86% of young adults surveyed saw election news on social media multiple times a day. This study examined how young adults used social media in relation to the 2016 election, including whether or not they used social media's unfriend/unfollow feature to selectively expose themselves to outlets to which they had partisan affinity. The results of the study showed that young liberals were statistically more likely than young conservatives to selectively expose themselves during the election.

IRB Number

18-027

Degree

B. A.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts.